If you are one of the millions of individuals in the U.S. suffering from a medical condition known as tinnitus then you most likely know that it tends to get worse when you are attempting to fall asleep. But what’s the reason for this? The ringing or buzzing in one or both ears is not a real noise but a complication of a medical problem like hearing loss, either permanent or temporary. But none of that information can give an explanation as to why this ringing becomes louder during the night.
The reality is more common sense than you may think. To know why your tinnitus gets louder as you attempt to sleep, you need to know the hows and whys of this extremely common medical problem.
What is tinnitus?
For the majority of people, tinnitus isn’t an actual sound, but this fact just compounds the confusion. The person dealing with tinnitus can hear the sound but nobody else can. It sounds like air-raid sirens are ringing in your ears but the person sleeping right beside you can’t hear it at all.
Tinnitus by itself is not a disease or condition, but an indication that something else is happening. It is typically linked to significant hearing loss. For a lot of people, tinnitus is the first indication they get that their hearing is at risk. People who have hearing loss frequently don’t recognize their condition until the tinnitus symptoms begin because it develops so gradually. Your hearing is changing if you start to hear these noises, and they’re warning you of those changes.
What causes tinnitus?
Tinnitus is one of medical science’s greatest conundrums and doctors don’t have a strong understanding of why it occurs. It may be a symptom of numerous medical problems including damage to the inner ear. There are very small hair cells inside of your ears that move in response to sound. Often, when these little hairs get damaged to the point that they can’t effectively send signals to the brain, tinnitus symptoms happen. These electrical messages are how the brain converts sound into something it can clearly interpret like a car horn or a person speaking.
The absence of sound is the base of the current hypothesis. Your brain will begin to fill in for information that it’s waiting for because of hearing loss. It gets perplexed by the lack of feedback from the ear and tries to compensate for it.
When it comes to tinnitus, that would explain a few things. For starters, why it’s a symptom of so many different illnesses that impact the ear: mild infections, concussions, and age-related hearing loss. It also tells you something about why the ringing gets worse at night for some people.
Why are tinnitus sounds worse at night?
You might not even detect it, but your ear receives some sounds during the day. It will faintly hear sounds coming from another room or around the corner. But at night, when you’re trying to sleep, it gets very quiet.
Suddenly, all the sound vanishes and the level of confusion in the brain increases in response. It only knows one thing to do when faced with complete silence – generate noise even if it isn’t real. Sensory deprivation has been demonstrated to induce hallucinations as the brain tries to insert information, like auditory input, into a place where there isn’t any.
In other words, it’s too quiet at night so your tinnitus seems worse. If you’re having a hard time sleeping because your tinnitus symptoms are so loud, creating some noise may be the solution.
Producing noise at night
For some people suffering from tinnitus, all they require is a fan running in the background. The loudness of the ringing is decreased just by the sound of the motor of the fan.
But you can also buy devices that are specifically made to reduce tinnitus sounds. White noise machines reproduce nature sounds like rain or ocean waves. The soft noise soothes the tinnitus but isn’t distracting enough to keep you awake like keeping the TV on may do. Instead, you could try an app that plays soothing sounds from your smartphone.
Can anything else make tinnitus symptoms worse?
Lack of sound isn’t the only thing that can bring about an increase in your tinnitus. Too much alcohol before bed can lead to more extreme tinnitus symptoms. Other things, including high blood pressure and stress can also be a contributing factor. If adding sound into your nighttime routine doesn’t help or you feel dizzy when the ringing is active, it’s time to find out about treatment options by making an appointment with us right away.
References
https://hearinghealthfoundation.org/hearing-loss-tinnitus-statistics/